


The Artists' Way

by jenny_of_oldstones



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games), Red Dead Redemption 2
Genre: French stereotypes, M/M, Oral Sex, Terrible accents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 08:01:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20170882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenny_of_oldstones/pseuds/jenny_of_oldstones
Summary: Arthurs helps French artist and renowned mooch Charles Chatenay escape San Denis, with a few detours along the way.





	The Artists' Way

Arthur wasn’t surprised to find Charles Chatenay dressed as a woman on the docks of San Denis. He was even less surprised to learn that the Frenchman needed Arthur to escort him to a boat, lest his moneylenders and other assailants find him and put him in an early grave.

“You are the only one I can count on in this soulless shithole of a city,” said Charles, fanning himself with a silk fan. “One more favor, and I will be free of the confines of mediocrity. What do you say?”

“I don’t know,” said Arthur. He was sweating in the San Denis humidity. He had been hankering for a drink, not trouble. “Last time I helped you, I nearly got my teeth kicked in.”

“True, but I do not think you would like to find me dead and floating in the harbor tomorrow,” said Charles. “A few blocks, nothing more, I promise you.”

Arthur rubbed his chin. The little Frenchman might have been a cad, but his scrapes did make Arthur laugh, and they rarely involved bullets. Charles was annoying, lecherous, and slippery, but at worst Arthur would see him get pummeled again, this time in a geisha dress, and that had to be worth something. “Sure.”

“Excellent.” Charles patted him on the chest. “I knew you would come through.”

The hand lingered. Arthur stared at it until Charles removed it. “This way,” said Charles.

He followed Charles down the busy street. The Frenchman darted between alcoves, hiding behind his fan, while Arthur strolled along behind him. Charles was not in the least convincing as a woman, and he turned more than a few heads.

“You’re not real good at lying low, are you?” asked Arthur.

“What do you mean?” asked Charles, wiping the sweat off his hairy cleavage.

“I mean, you look and act like a man who’s trying to hide from an army of angry husbands,” said Arthur.

“Nonsense, I am like Tiresias—I shed one skin and don another, man to woman, the last thing any of these puritans would expect of me.”

“I can assure you, that is not the case.”

“Hush.” Charles ducked behind a pole. Across the street was a red-faced man with beady eyes. Arthur vaguely recognized him as the man who had pointed a pistol at Charles in front of his house some weeks earlier.

“He looks mad,” said Arthur.

“A misunderstanding,” said Charles.

“Involving his wife?”

“She wanted life, experience, freedom. He would have chained her in domesticity. You will shoot him for me if it comes to it, yes?”

“If you think I’m getting in a shootout on your behalf, you are out of your fool mind.”

“Come, follow the trolley, we can sneak by him.”

Charles skulked along beside the trolley, stepping in mud and horse dung and sullying the hem of his dress. Arthur followed behind him, keeping a slow pace even as Charles waved at him to keep up. They eventually crossed the street and walked past the station, where Charles suddenly grabbed his arm.

“Ah, mon dieu, not that way." 

There were four men loitering around a fountain. They wore suits, and Arthur noted the pearl-handled pistol their leader wore low on his hip.

“Let me guess, you borrowed money from them?” said Arthur.

“I asked them to invest in the arts,” said Charles.

“Right. Where’s the money now?”

“Gone, pissed away like so much else. That fat one chased me up and down a rooftop, can you believe?”

“As someone who collects debts, I can,” said Arthur. “There anyone in this city you ain’t crossed? How is it you’re still alive?”

Charles gave him a smile. He twirled his mustache, the makeup glopped onto it crusting off between his fingers. “Charm.”

Arthur laughed.

“Now, come,” hissed Charles, dragging him back the other way.

They were halfway down the sidewalk when Charles decided to duck into the station. “This way, through.”

Arthur followed him. As he came through the door, he almost ran smack into Charles, who had started to backpedal.

"_Ack_, I fondled his wife. Quick, a distraction!”

“What—” Arthur had a split second to scan the room before Charles grabbed him and pulled him down into a kiss.

Arthur's first notion was to be revolted. His second was to be surprised as the Frenchman pushed his tongue into his mouth. His third was a strange realization that this was the first time he’d been kissed in he couldn't remember how long, and that Charles was good at it. Real good. The fact that he was in a dress for some reason made it even better. Arthur closed his eyes and let it happen. Charles grabbed his buttocks in both his hands and squeezed, and Arthur, despite himself, rumbled in his mouth.

Charles drew back and slapped him on the chest. “Ha! I knew it!”

Arthur wiped the lipstick off his face. Now that the moment was over, he was aware that everyone in the station was staring at them, most with recognition of exactly what they had just witnessed.

“I had a feeling about you,” said Charles.

“Yeah, well, good for you,” said Arthur, and spat on the floor. “Why in the hell did you do that?”

“I thought I recognized him,” Charles waved vaguely at a group of men sitting on nearby benches. “My mistake.”

“No kidding.” Arthur grabbed his arm and yanked him toward the back of the station. “Let’s get you on that boat before I throw you in the harbor myself.”

The whole way to the boat, Charles wouldn’t stop smiling. Not when he ripped his dress as they climbed through a fence, not when he got catcalled, and especially not when a man tried to solicit him. If anything, the attention only made him preen. He kept flashing Arthur grins and winks, and Arthur had to ask himself over and over why he was doing this.

_For a laugh,_ he told himself._ You were doing it for a laugh. _

He wiped his mouth for what felt like the fiftieth time.

“All men are the same," said Charles. “They crave woman in the day, but at night they come out, and then they find men like you and me.”

“You and I ain’t alike,” said Arthur.

“No? I did not think you resisted.”

Arthur was about to belt him one, when Charles ducked behind a stack of crates. “Fuck.”

The men in suits were at the gangplank for the ship. They’d brought friends with them, three new men, including one who was sharpening a knife. Arthur ducked down beside Charles.

“Goddammit, how much money did you borrow?”

“The arts are never cheap,” said Charles. “The state, however, has a harlot’s heart and gives nothing for the soul.”

“You borrowed from the city?” asked Arthur.

“The mayor,” said Charles. “That soulless rat.”

Arthur cursed. He’d dealt with Lemieux enough to know that the man was a cutthroat. “Well, friend, you’re up shit creek now.”

“The shittiest,” said Charles. “I cannot take this boat. I must find other passage to Fiji tomorrow. Tonight, though, I need a place to stay.”

“Ain’t happening.”

“Please, my friend. I cannot go home. If I stay on the street, they will find me eventually. Just one night, I swear.”

Charles clutched his arm in a way that made Arthur want to shake him off. As much as he was tempted to tell the Frenchman to go hang himself, he felt an odd pang of guilt. Charles was right—he wouldn’t make it on his own.

“Fine. You can stay with me. For one night,” said Arthur.

* * *

Together he and Charles rode to the upside of town. Charles sat sidesaddle behind him, on account of his dress, with his arms around Arthur’s waist. Arthur could feel eyes staring at them as they rode along, and clenched his jaw every time Charles blew a kiss in response to a wolf whistle or invective.

“Keep it under your skirt,” growled Arthur.

“I do not know what you mean,” said Charles, and waved at a blushing shoeshiner.

The owner of the saloon didn’t ask any questions when Arthur said he needed a friend added to his tab for the evening. He didn’t even bat an eye when Charles propped his hairy, sweaty bosom on the bar and began fanning himself with a silken-gloved hand. His paint had started to crack and run down his face.

“It is hotter than a whore’s cunt in here,” said Charles. “I cannot wait to shed this wig.”

“Nothing stopping you from shedding it now,” said Arthur.

Charles ordered the most expensive item on the menu—the lobster bisque—and tucked in. Orange soup coated his goatee and mixed with the melting glop on his face.

Arthur watched in astonishment. “You make an ugly woman, you know that?”

“I did not hear you complaining before,” said Charles.

Arthur slid farther down the bar. Charles finished his soup by tilting back the bowl and running his tongue along the bottom. “That was the best meal I’ve had in this country. An entire nation of warmongering imperialists, and not one of them know how to use spices.”

Arthur paid the tab. “Let’s get you where decent folk don’t have to see you.”

He led Charles to his room upstairs. They received no end of suggestive looks from the other patrons. As soon as Arthur had Charles in the room he locked the door behind him and let out a sigh.

“_C'est une belle_." Charles took in the brocade curtains and bedspread, the silver washing basin and the floor length mirror. “What was it that you said you did?”

“Shoot people, mostly,” murmured Arthur.

Charles tossed his wig across the room and threw himself on the bed. He lay there spread out, sinking into the feather mattress. “Truly excellent.”

“Listen, friend.” Arthur untied his neckerchief. Now that he was in the cool, dark room, exhaustion sank into his body. The patience that he’d been keeping in check all day was starting to wear thin. “I’m letting you stay here for god knows what reason, but I can tell you right now, you're sleeping on the floor.”

Charles sat up. “Surely, there is enough room for two.”

“Well, surely, you didn’t hear me correctly.” Arthur yanked a pillow off the bed and tossed it on the floor. “I have yanked you out of the fire three times, and I can tell you my hospitality is running dry. I ain’t a man of charity, and I ain’t in the mood to share nothing right now, let alone a bed ain’t hardly big enough for me. Now get off there before I throw you down myself.”

Charles scampered off the bed. He sat down on the pillow on the floor, watching Arthur unbuckle his belt and put his guns on the nightstand. “Mon ami, I will not forget everything you have done for me. It’s true, you have fended off the cretins and philistines of San Denis better than anyone has ever done. If it is ever in my power to repay you, I will.”

“Sure.” Arthur sat down on the bed and peeled off his boots. He pulled off his pants and left them tucked inside his boots, and set them beside the bed. Then he pulled off his shirt and rubbed his neck.

When he got up to wash his face in the basin, Charles was lying on his back on the floor. He gazed up at the moon between the slats of the window, his face lost in thought. Arthur ignored him as he wiped down his chest and back, washing the sweat and dust of the day off him.

“Goodnight,” said Arthur, perfunctorily, and blew out the candle. The bed creaked as he climbed into it.

“Goodnight, my friend,” said Charles.

Arthur lay on his side, watching the shadows of other saloon patrons walk past the door. He could hear laughter downstairs and the off-tune clinkery of the piano. His shotgun was within easy reach, and his rifle was beneath the bed. If he was less tired, he would suggest he and Charles spend the night against the wall with the best view of the doorway, but the bed was soft as sin.

The floor creaked slightly. Charles was turning over. Arthur could tell from his breathing that he was awake. The Frenchman sighed and huffed, shifting position as he tried to get comfortable. Arthur ignored it, but as the moon rose higher, he found that odd guilt from earlier starting to creep in. 

“Charles,” he murmured. “You awake?”

"Unfortunately," said Charles.

"If you ain't going to be quiet, get up here." 

“I was hoping you’d ask.” Charles crawled onto the bed. He threw himself down beside Arthur, hard enough that the mattress woofed and a few feathers poofed out the sides. Arthur endured the thrashing and thumping of pillows as the Frenchman made himself comfortable. “I _knew_ you’d ask.”

“Sure.” Arthur tried to force his mind down into sleep. Until he felt a hand on his side.

“What are you doing?” asked Arthur, his eyes still closed.

“It seems a wasted opportunity,” said Charles. “We are both here, in a bed."

"So?"

"I adore you, and you adore me.”

“That is not the word I would use.”

Charles's hand moved slowly up and down. The caress sent shivers up Arthur's spine. It had been a long time since he’d been touched by anyone. Weeks and months sometimes passed in the wilderness where the only voice he heard was his own and the only flesh he knew was a horse between his legs. He hadn’t gone with whores in years, and his friends in the gang rarely touched him, loved him though they did. Eliza was a distant memory, and Mary a false hope. The men he’d known in his skittish, fearful youth were like a dream from another life.

Charles was harmless. He wouldn’t talk, and even if he did, who would believe him? It wasn’t as if there was anything to lose here. The Frenchman had done him no harm, other than be annoying, and as far as Arthur could tell the man really was attracted to him, using him though he was.

_Why not?_ he asked himself._ What is there to lose other than pride, and what has that ever gotten you?_

Arthur put his hand over Charles's. Charles sensed the invitation and all but threw himself against him, hoisting a leg over Arthur’s hip and pressing his open mouth to the back of his neck. It was so immediate and aggressive that Arthur felt a jolt of shock.

_No shame here,_ he thought.

“You uh, haven’t picked anything up from all those wives you’ve been sleeping with, have you?” asked Arthur, to disguise the sound of his swallowing.

“I am perfectly clean,” said Charles. His hand had wandered south and was now exploring Arthur though his breeches, cupping and stroking him and feeling the weight of him in his hand.

“Right.” Arthur closed his eyes. It was hard to stay gruff with someone who was so determined. Charles wrapped his mouth around Arthur’s ear, sucking it like it was the best thing he’d tasted in his life, all while pressing tight against him, soaking up his warmth in the cool, damp air of the hotel room. Charles didn’t seem to care he it was sloppy, or clingy, or anything, he just _did_ without thinking- which considering the wild goosechase he had led Arthur on today, Arthur supposed made a lot of sense.

“You still wearing that dress?” asked Arthur.

“I am.”

“Take it off.”

Charles unglued himself from Arthur’s back and stood up. Arthur rolled over, dizzy and dry-mouthed, and watched Charles carefully unbutton his frock. He was tempted to rip it open and make those buttons pop across the floor, but it was Charles’s only clothes, so he contained himself.

“Voila.” The dress fell around Charles's knees and he kicked it aside. Underneath he was completely nude. 

“No drawers?” Arthur asked.

“I sold them,” said Charles, crawling back into bed. Rather than going back to wrapping around Arthur like an octopus, he traced his fingers through the hair on his stomach. “It’s nice to find an American man who can look me in the eye while I fuck him.”

“They normally don’t?”

“No, they look anywhere else. Some of them grow so enraged with shame that they will strangle you if you remind them of what they are.” He sighed. “I am not going to miss this country.”

“It ain’t all bad.”

“No,” said Charles, and pulled him close. “It is not.”

After an hour of being groped and ground within an inch of his life, Arthur was willing to concede that Charles Chatenay was a very good lover. He kept squeezing Arthur’s ass as if he could not believe his luck, and he rutted hungrily against his leg, unashamed of his pure want. It was intoxicating to be in bed with someone who cared so little and so much at the same time.

At some point past midnight, Arthur found himself on his back with his legs spread. Charles's head bobbed in his lap with long, noisy slurps, while Arthur pawed helplessly at the bedspread. Heat flushed up his body, and he had to admit that maybe bringing Charles back to his hotel room hadn’t been such a bad idea.

“_Sheeeeeeet_.” Arthur’s stomach muscles fluttered. He kept curling up on himself, grabbing Charles’s head. “You’re good.”

Charles came off his cock. “Of course, I am, I am not some blushing altar boy. I give myself utterly to nature-”

Arthur shoved Charles’s face back to his lap. He whined as the Frenchman took him in again, relaxing his throat to go all the way down.

“I’m gonna—” He couldn’t finish it. His back arched up off the bed and he came in a white hot rush, his balls throbbing in Charles’s hand as the Frenchman squeezed him. A pitiful sound broke Arthur’s lips as he twisted in the sheets.

His senses came back slowly to him. Charles lifted his mouth with a wet sound and spat on the floor. He rubbed the sides of his jaw with a grimace. “I hope I do not have to bribe anyone at the docks tomorrow.”

Arthur made a noncommittal noise. It felt like his soul had just been exorcised through his penis.

Charles must have noticed, because he slinked up beside him like an ally cat. His fingers traced the scar on Arthur’s shoulder. “Well?”

“Yeah,” said Arthur.

“That’s what I like about you, so eloquent.”

Arthur had a notion of what he wanted, so he shoved himself further down the bed. Charles was small with no foreskin, which Arthur found odd. Secretly, he was glad, because it meant he wasn’t about to embarrass himself by gagging on a lot of meat.

“Don't be afraid, mon petit,” said Charles.

“Shut up,” said Arthur, and got to work.

Arthur was at least proud that he hadn’t forgotten how to do this much. Charles made a lot of noise, which wasn’t any different than the rest of the evening, but it worked on Arthur’s ego well enough. He felt drowsy and warm all over, and able to work his mouth in a slow way that felt half like dreaming and half like filth. Charles murmured French words at him while carding his fingers through his hair, and that was nice. When his breathing started to pick up and Arthur had to put a hand on his waist to keep his hips from moving, that was nice, too.

“Mon dieu,” breathed Charles, in that scratchy voice of his. “Mon dieu.”

“Hmmm?” murmured Arthur, his eyes half-closed.

“It means, I hope this building is built on the level, because otherwise my come is going to leak out of one corner of that sluttish mouth of yours.”

Arhtur thought that was an awful lot for two words, but a second later he didn’t have time to think, because he was doing his best not to choke. He decided, screw it, and spat on the covers instead.

“Too much?” asked Charles, his belly rising and falling.

“You taste like sour milk,” said Arthur, and spat again.

Charles laughed and slumped against the headboard. “You’re not the first to say so.”

* * *

Arthur woke up the next morning with a feeling like floating. His skin smelled like someone else’s, and it had been a long time since he’d had that strange pleasure.

He sat up and rubbed his eyes. The sunlight was faint on the floorboards. He looked over and found that Charles had stretched out on his back in the night. The Frenchman was snoring, one hand curled on his stomach. His hair and beard were a mess.

“Charles,” he said. “We gotta get moving.”

Charles kept snoring. Arthur considered slapping him awake, but the impulse to do so was weak. A softness had wormed its way into his thinking, so much so that he couldn’t even find the will to dislike himself for it.

_A laugh,_ he thought.

He got up and stretched his back. His mind felt sluggish and well-fucked. He examined himself in the mirror, took in the bruises and scratches. After a spell, he fished his journal out of his satchel and sat down on the settee. He lit himself a cigarette and let his hand start sketching whatever it fancied.

He drew his boots with the trouser legs still inside them. He drew Charles’s dress puddled on the floor. He drew the wig and its strange shadows where it had caught on the wardrobe. He drew the shaving brushes and the wash basin. His eye drifted back to Charles, and eventually he drew him, too.

Arthur had once drawn Mary like this, and a few others. He drew Charles with his ridiculous mustache that was all a mess, and his skinny body and skinny wrists. He drew the way the bed clothes were tangled around his ankles, and the way the sunlight was beginning to prickle over his skin. He drew Charles young, because he looked young, and because Arthur felt young himself. He was so absorbed in it that it took him a minute to notice that Charles was watching him.

“You are an artist?” There was a sardonic edge to the question. Charles sounded strange in the morning—less effervescent, less affectionate. He sounded more like a normal man and less like whatever it was he flounced around pretending to be.

“Nah, I wouldn’t say that.”

Charles held out his hand.

Arthur hesitated. He handed the journal over, and watched while Charles studied the portrait. He eventually turned the page and began to study Arthur’s other drawings—those of pronghorns, of moss-covered mansions and orchids and weeds growing up through floorboards of abandoned homesteads. Arthur smoked his cigarette, wishing he’d put on pants so he could shove his hands in his pockets.

“I like these,” said Charles. “They lack pretension.”

“Thanks, I guess,” said Arthur.

“You draw what you think is beautiful, not what they tell you is beautiful.”

Arthur wasn’t sure who "they" were, but didn’t say so.

“But mostly,” said Charles, flipping back to the drawing of him naked, “I like them because they are honest. Let me have this one.”

“Why?” asked Arthur.

“As a memento,” said Charles. “You were the only friend I had in this country.”

“That ain’t hardly true.”

“No? You saved me three times, you bought me drinks, you talked to me. I have been traveling a long time, and it has been a lifetime since I met someone as good as you." 

Arthur looked away. He felt that pang of guilt again like a nail in his chest. He’d thought Charles ridiculous, and he was, but he’d treated him like he was ridiculous, too. He had never thought the Frenchman really cared about him either way. Much as he called Arthur friend, Arthur had never thought he'd meant it. 

“You already have one of mine,” said Charles. “Let me have one of yours. If it ends up being worth something, I will buy you a drink.”

“All right, then.” He took the journal back and tore the page out.

“Sign it first,” said Charles.

Arthur did. Charles took it and slid it carefully between the pages of the Bible on the desk, then set it aside.

“C’mon,” said Arthur, stepping into his boots and trousers. He tugged them up, looking anywhere but the Frenchman. “We need to get you down to the docks.”

Chatenay gave a dramatic sigh. “Very well. But first—” Charles flipped over onto his stomach, wriggling his hairy behind. “I want you to screw me on my last day in America. I wanted to be fucked by a real cowboy, so I can say piss off from this Puritan hellhole with come dribbling out my ass, the way the great Roman philosophers intended.”

Arthur stared at him. Then he sighed and unbuckled his pants. “Sure.”

* * *

They got down to the docks around noon. Charles insisted on having another bowl of lobster bisque and two glasses of beer for the road. He’d put his dress and wig back on, but didn’t have any makeup. He also refused to shave his mustache and beard, so it couldn’t have been less obvious that Arthur was escorting a hairy little man in a dress through the city in broad daylight.

“Just try not to look at any police,” said Arthur.

“Agreed. I am tired of this country and its obsession with authoritarianism. It’s off to the Old World with me, to the land of Eden and big tittied natives.”

“Will you keep it down? You don’t even know if there's a ship to Fiji still here.”

“Fiji, Sumatra, Tasmania, it does not matter. Somewhere where the lighting is good,” said Charles.

After that, Charles at least became quieter. He seemed to sense that if he wanted to escape San Denis any time soon, he was going to have to keep a low profile. Arthur was as alert as a prairie dog, scanning every street corner for familiar faces. Up and down the docks, Arthur asked the sailors where their ships were headed. New York, some to London (Chatenay gagged at that), one to Algiers.

“Algiers is French,” moaned Charles. “Spare me.”

“You’re gonna have to be a mite less picky if you don’t wanna end up dead,” snapped Arthur.

Finally, near the end of the dock, they found a steamer that was headed to the South Pacific. The dockworker gave Charles a long look, but he took the money Arthur offered him readily enough. He nodded toward the end of the ship, where a gangplank was set.

“Thank you again,” said Charles. “I would have had to bribe him in some other way.”

“Yeah, and your jaw is sore, you told me,” said Arthur. His eyes scanned the dock. It was strangely empty. Maybe the sailors had gone into the taverns for one last drink, but something didn’t feel right. 

As they approached the gangplank, he saw why. Seven men stood up from behind crates, all of them the suited men from the trolley station.

“Oh, no, no, no." Charles began to back up.

“Relax,” growled Arthur.

“Friend,” said a blonde man in front. He had blue eyes and a long scar down his face. “We’re just here for the Frenchman.”

“I gathered that.” Arthur's body was a match waiting to be struck, but his mind was a pool of still water. “What is it you fellers want with him?”

“Just to talk,” said the blonde man. His pearl-handled pistol glinted in its holster. The others were unarmed, save a man who was holding a big knife. “He borrowed a lot of money.”

“Yeah, well, he ain’t got any,” said Arthur. “Tell your boss he made a run for it.”

“My employer is not very understanding,” said the blonde man. He reached into his coat and pulled out a billfold. “He can’t be worth much to you. What will it cost, fifty, one-hundred dollars?”

A day ago, and he would probably have taken it. Charles Chatenay was more trouble than he was worth, and the last thing Arthur needed was to make a stink when the Pinkertons were breathing down his neck. It would have been funny, to watch Charles get his head kicked in by a bunch of angry cuckholds and loan sharks while he cursed and screamed at them in a floral printed dress.

Arthur didn’t look at the money. “Leave my friend be."

The blonde man seemed surprised, but shrugged. “There's a shame.”

Two men made a run at him. Arthur saw the first one’s punch coming and ducked under it. He came up fast, his fist connecting with ribs. The second man grabbed Arthur by the collar, his fist plowing into Arthur’s face. Arthur saw stars, but he swung wild, his knuckles meeting something that felt like bone.

His vision cleared, and three men fell upon him.

Two grabbed his arms. The big man with the knife rushed him. Arthur kicked the man holding his left arm in the knee, dragging them both down. The knife stabbed into his shoulder, caught on muscle. Arthur bared his teeth and thrashed as hard as he could and tore free, staggering back from the three of them. Blood was running down his face, and he could feel a deep pulsing ache in his shoulder.

The two men from before were slowly getting to their feet. Another was creeping in from the side. Six against one. 

Bad odds. Arthur was a brute and a killer, but he wasn’t stupid. Nor had he forgotten the blonde man leaning on a crate off to the side, the pearl-handled pistol in his holster.

“You can do it, mon ami!” shouted Charles from some far-off distance.

“Yeah, yeah, mon ami,” grunted Arthur. “If I end up hanged for this—”

Arthur drew his pistol.

Time slowed down. He could hear a clock ticking in his head. His mind marked each target, counting bullets, even as the timer clicked down his life. The blonde man was reaching for his gun. The knife man was rushing him.

They were fast.

But Arthur was faster.

He fired from the hip. His hand slammed down on the hammer, his finger squeezing the trigger. His lungs were empty, his feet steady, his mind like a machine.

The knife man’s head burst like an overripe melon. The man next to him’s eye squished out. A third man’s jaw spun off his skull at the same time that the man behind him reeled backwards in a spray of blood. The blonde man was just starting to aim his pistol when his head snapped back, and he toppled backwards over the crate he’d been leaning on.

There was only one man left standing. He stood there, cringing away from the carnage around him, wide-eyed in the drifting smoke.

Arthur shoved his pistol back in its holster and wrenched his shotgun off his shoulder. He pointed the barrel at him. “Get.”

The man didn’t have to be told twice. He darted off, tripping over one of his colleagues before making a sprint for the street. Already, Arthur could hear people on the docks screaming and running away.

“That was incredible.” Charles came out from behind a crate. “The blood, the speed—are you all right?”

Arthur stared down at the blood on his chest. It didn’t hurt right now, but it sure as hell would later. “I’m fine. C’mon, you got a boat to catch.”

Charles followed. He spat on the blonde man as they walked up the gangplank.

“I don’t have any way to repay you,” said Charles.

“So, you’ve said.” Arthur touched his nose. It was definitely broken. “Find yourself a place to hide. Once you’re at sea, bribe them to let you stay on. You know how. And if that don’t work—” Arthur pulled a platinum pocket watch out of his satchel. He always seemed to have a dozen of these. “Flash 'em this.”

Charles took the watch and held it up to his ear. He looked at Arthur a long time, then grabbed his hand. “Thank you.”

“Sure,” said Arthur, pulling away before Charles could say something really awful, like he loved him or something. “Get going.”

Charles nodded and shuffled toward the cargo hold. Arthur started down the gangplank, whistling for his horse. He needed to get out of town, fast.

“Cowboy!”

Arthur looked up. Charles was holding up his drawing. “If we become rich, we will drink and fuck and smoke by the seaside, with a gamine on each arm!”

Arthur waved him off.

* * *

Arthur waited until he was outside city limits before he reined his sweating horse to a stop. He sat in the saddle beneath a mimosa tree and took out the drawing Charles had given him.

It was a sketch of a naked woman, made mostly of triangles and squares. Arthur didn’t really understand it, but he guessed it was good. He felt a sudden wistfulness as he stared at it, and realized that it was the last thing he would likely ever have of Charles Chatenay.

If he ever ran into the Frenchman again, Arthur decided, tucking the sketch back into his satchel, he’d ask Charles to sketch him this time, with all the rest that came with it.


End file.
